It is becoming increasingly important and urgent to rapidly and accurately identify toxic materials or pathogens with a high degree of reliability, particularly when the toxins/pathogens may be purposefully or inadvertently mixed with other materials. In uncontrolled environments, such as the atmosphere, a wide variety of airborne organic particles from humans, plants and animals occur naturally. Many of these naturally occurring organic particles appear similar to some toxins and pathogens even at a genetic level. It is important to be able to distinguish between these organic particles and the toxins/pathogens.
In cases where toxins and/or pathogens are purposely used to inflict harm or damage, they are typically mixed with so-called “masking agents” to conceal their identity. These masking agents are used to trick various detection methods and apparatus to overlook or be unable to distinguish the toxins/pathogens mixed therewith. This is a recurring concern for homeland security where the malicious use of toxins and/or infectious pathogens may disrupt the nation's air, water and/or food supplies. Additionally, certain businesses and industries could also benefit from the rapid and accurate identification of the components of mixtures and materials. One such industry that comes to mind is the drug manufacturing industry, where the identification of mixture composition could aid in preventing the alteration of prescription and non-prescription drugs.
One known method for identifying materials and organic substances contained within a mixture, or in elemental form, is to measure the absorbance, transmission, reflectance or emission of each material as a function of the wavelength or frequency of the illuminating or scattered light transmitted through the material. In the case of a mixture this requires that the mixture be separable into its component parts. Such measurements as a function of wavelength or frequency produce a plot that is generally referred to as a spectrum. The spectra of the material or object, i.e., sample spectra, can be identified by comparing the sample spectra to a set of reference spectra that have been individually collected for a set of known elements or materials. The set of reference spectra are typically referred to as a spectral library, and the process of comparing the sample spectra to the spectral library is generally termed a spectral library search.
Spectral library searches have been described in the literature for many years, and are widely used today. Spectral library searches using infrared (approximately 750 nm to 100 μm wavelength), Raman, fluorescence or near infrared (approximately 750 nm to 2500 nm wavelength) transmissions are well suited to identify many materials due to the rich set of detailed features these spectroscopy techniques generally produce. The above-identified spectroscopy techniques produce a rich fingerprint of the various pure entities and can be used to identify the component whether alone or in a mixture.
Conventional library searches generally and other such applications are time consuming and memory intensive. The process is also memory intensive because spectral libraries can be substantial in size. The instant application overcomes this and other problems by searching a sub-set of the library.